POL S 555 A: American Politics Topics: PARTIES AND IDEOLOGIES IN AMERICAN POLITICS

You can find the full syllabus here

March 31. Introduction to political parties and political ideologies.

Read:

1. James Madison, The Federalist #10
2. John Gerring, “Ideology: A Definitional Analysis,” Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (December 1997):957-94.

April 7. Why do political parties exist? What functions do they serve?

Read:

1. E. E. Schattschneider, Party Government (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1942), ch. 1, ch. 3.
2. John Aldrich, Why Parties: A Second Look (University of Chicago Press, 2011), chs. 1-2, 9.
3. Kathleen Bawn et al., “A Theory of Political Parties: Groups, Policy Demands and Nominations in American Politics.” Perspectives on Politics 10 (2012): 571-597.
4. Nolan McCarty and Eric Schickler, “On the Theory of Parties.” Annual Review of Political Science. 21 (2018):175-193.

April 14. American political parties in historical and comparative perspective

Read:

1. Amel Ahmed, “Parties and Democracy: A Comparative Perspective,” in Adam Hilton and Jessica Hejny, eds., Parties, Power, and Change: Developmental Approaches to American Party Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).
2. Mark D. Brewer and Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Dynamics of American Political Parties (Cambridge University Press, 2009), chs. 1-8 and 11.

April 21. Parties in government

Read:

1. American Political Science Association, “Summary of Conclusions and Proposals” in Toward A More Responsible Two-Party System (Washington, DC: 1950), 1-14.
2. Frances E. Lee, Insecure Majorities: Congress and the Perpetual Campaign (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016), ch. 1.
3. Frances E. Lee, “How Party Polarization Affects Governance.” Annual Review of Political Science 18 (2015):261-82
4. Jacob M. Grumbach, “Laboratories of Democratic Backsliding.” American Political Science Review 117, no. 3 (2023): 967–84.
5. Sarah Anzia, “Party and Ideology in American Local Government: An Appraisal.” Annual Review of Political Science 24 (2021):133-50.

April 28. Ideology in the mass public

1. Donald Kinder and Nathan Kalmoe, Neither Liberal Nor Conservative: Ideological Innocence in the American Public (University of Chicago Press, 2017), entire.
2. Elizabeth Mitchell Elder and Neil A. O’Brian, “Social Groups as the Source of Political Belief Systems: Fresh Evidence on an Old Theory.” American Political Science Review 116, no. 4 (2022): 1407–24.

May 5. Parties in the mass public

1. Richard Johnston, “Party Identification: Unmoved Mover or Sum of Preferences?” Annual Review of Political Science 9 (2006):329-51.
2. Patrick J. Egan, “Identity as Dependent Variable: How Americans Shift Their Identities to Align with Their Politics.” American Journal of Political Science64, no. 3 (2020): 699–716.
3. Donald P. Green, Brian T. Hamel, and Michael G. Miller. “Macropartisanship Revisited.” Perspectives on Politics22, no. 3 (2024):599–608.
4. Eduardo Loru, et al., “Ideology and Polarization Set the Agenda on Social Media.” Scientific Reports 15, 35816 (2025).
5. Lilliana Mason, “Political Identities,” in Leonie Huddy, et al., eds., The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology, 3rd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2023), 886-917.

May 12. Party polarization in the mass public

1. Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018), entire.
2. Shanto Iyengar, Yphtach Lelkes, Matthew Levendusky, Neil Malhotra, and Sean J. Westwood, “The Origins and Consequences of Affective Polarization in the United States.” Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019):129-146.

May 19. The prospects and packaging of liberalism, conservatism, and socialism in the U.S.

1. Hans Noel, Political Ideologies and Political Parties in America (Cambridge University Press, 2013), chs. 1-2.
2. Daniel L. Hopkins and Hans Noel, “Trump and the Shifting Meaning of ‘Conservative’: Using Activists’ Pairwise Comparisons to Measure Politicians’ Perceived Ideologies.” American Political Science Review116, no. 3 (2022): 1133–40
3. Eric Foner, “Why Is There No Socialism in the United States?” History Workshop Journal (1984):57-80.
4. Adam L. Ozer Ozer, Brian W. Sullivan, and Douglas S. Van, “Viewed from Different Engels? Differences in Reactions to ‘Socialism’ as a Policy Label.” Political Research Quarterly 75, no. 4 (2022): 1297-1312.

May 26. Party electoral coalitions

1. Rachel Blum, “The Asymmetry of Movement-Factions in the Democratic and Republican Parties,” in Adam Hilton and Jessica Hejny, eds., Placing Parties in American Political Development (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025).
2. Trevor E. Brown and Suzanne Mettler, Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976-2020.” Perspectives on Politics 22, no. 3 (September 2024): 630-58.
3. Christopher Federico, Stanley Feldman, and Christopher Weber, The Authoritarian Divide: Partisan Identity, Voting, and the Transformation of the American Electorate (Oxford University Press, 2026), ch. 1.
4. Ismail White and Chryl Laird, Steadfast Democrats: How Social Forces Shape Black Political Behavior (Princeton University Press, 2020), introduction and ch. 1
5. Jacob S. Hacker, Amelia Malpas, Paul Pierson, and Sam Zacher. “Bridging the Blue Divide: The Democrats’ New Metro Coalition and the Unexpected Prominence of Redistribution.” Perspectives on Politics22, no. 3 (2024): 609–29.

June 2. The coherence of ideologies

1. David Pinsof, David O. Sears, and Martie G. Haselton, “Strange Bedfellows: The Alliance Theory of Political Belief Systems,” Psychological Inquiry 34, no. 3 (2023): 139-60.
2. Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis, The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America (Oxford University Press, 2023), entire.